Eshin Direct

The idea of watching ballet with an all-male cast might through my heterosexual sensibilities out of the window. Of course, I’m quite comfortable with my sexuality for it to not be a problem and hence disappeared into the HK Academy of Performing Arts to watch the Trocks last night.

The Trocks, for those uncultured enough not to know (okay, I didn’t know about them until last week), are an all-male ballet troupe that perform as ballerinas to parody the classical ballet style. This troupe has been in existence for the last thirty years, starting out as a small production in New York’s off-, off-Broadway scene.

I was pleasantly amused with The Trocks. I’m neither a fan of the ballet nor am I a fan of men dressing up in girls clothes pretending to be girls. I’m not homophobic, it’s just not my thing as much as the ballet is – I’m probably more ballet-phobic than homophobic. But I thinks me doth protest too much. Having said that, the production is very amusingly done. It starts off with Swan Lake, giving us non-Ballet afficionados a chance to get in on the fun since we all will have seen it performed at some point in our lifetimes.

The humour is brought out by clumsy interpretations of the ballet, making the dancers look like ungraceful comics at times. At other times, it involves haming up the emotions – love is overplayed, needy adultation is demanded, and so on. And at times, they just do what we’ve all wanted them to do – for example, the fight between the prince, the swan princess and the big bad dude, ends with the swan princess having enough it and taking her own path. There’s women power for you.

The humour is perhaps what kept a philistine like myself amused throughout the two and half hours of ballet. But I suspect that my lack of ballet knowledge meant I was missing out on some in-jokes in the execution of the style. There were three Japanese girls in front of us that seemed to be students of ballet and they found parts of it amusing where seemingly there wasn’t anything amusing to be seen. It’s sort of like watching a Cantonese comedy – you only get the jokes that the translator has written in the subtitles; the comedy is often happening on a completely different level to your own understanding.

For all their hamming it up and at times cloddite executions of classical ballet moves, you had to appreciate The Trocks for their level of performance. Screwing things up as performance trick only works when you have mastered the skill. These guys evidently have been professionally trained in ballet and have not only mastered the male aspect of the art but also clearly have mastered the feminine roles too. I’d imagine that this takes some skill.

All in all, well worth it. For those of you in HK, it’s playing until Sunday 19th September at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. One downside about that venue is that they give you two fifteen minute breaks to buy drinks (no pre-ordering was evident). Which means if you are at the end of the queue, you don’t have long to drink your drinks before the performance starts again since they don’t let you bring drinks into the auditorium. They do allow bags, so I suggest you bring your own drinks.

And you might want to dress up a little. I came dressed as a bum as usual but for some, the ballet, all-male cast or not, still required its due of Old World decorum of a jacket or an evening dress.